Lawmakers vote to regulate California groundwater — finally

Water drilling crews are working around the clock to tap California’s groundwater. This well in Terra Bella (Tulare County) will bring water to orange groves.Bob Chamberlin/Los Angeles Times/MCT

It took the most severe drought in memory for California lawmakers to approve rules to regulate the pumping of groundwater. The package of bills sent to the governor for signature establishes California as the last state in the Western U.S. to regulate groundwater. The governor is expected to sign.

As the drought stretches into a third year, groundwater supplies are seriously over-drafted. Well diggers the length of the state are booked out for months as farmers and communities attempt to supplement vanishing surface water supplies with groundwater. Reports are rife of Central Valley wells going dry, land subsiding and coastal communities finding saltwater has intruded groundwater supplies.

Since 1914, farmers have considered water rights as part and parcel of property rights, and considered unlimited pumping their due. State Sen. Jim Nielsen, R-Gerber, (Tehama County) captured that viewpoint in a Thursday op-ed piece. The new rules put an end to that notion.

Instead, a regional framework was adopted that gives local agencies control over water withdrawals. “Local control” is always the watchword in water policy. Policy makers know they need to promise control to win acceptance of water basin management, but they also worried that local agency directors might not have the political will to exercise adequate control over the activities of their neighbors.

The new rules offered the carrot of local management, winning over some agricultural interests including the Association of California Water Agencies, but waves the cudgel of state control. If local agencies fail to adopt adequate groundwater management plans by 2020, the state will step in.

In a typical year, 39 percent of the state’s water use is groundwater. This year, in some communities use is approaching 60 percent. Replenishing groundwater supplies takes eons.

As part of the political calculus to build support for the groundwater bill, legislators included funding for dams in the water bond that will go before voters in November. While it is unclear that the new dams proposed would store enough additional water to justify their cost, they appear to be the political sweetener needed to convince Republican legislators to vote for historic changes to California’s groundwater rules. This change – naming an authority to monitor and control groundwater pumping — while long overdue, will make all the difference for California’s future.